* Posts by ThatOne

4225 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Oct 2017

Microsoft updates the Windows 11 Start Menu

ThatOne Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Settings

But some things slip through: Looking in the Settings/Privacy/Website Privacy Preferences/Manage Data menu, I often see sites mentioned, even after days and weeks, which shouldn't had left a trace.

I guess more and more websites don't rely just on cookies, there must be some other way to brand you. (For the record, Cache and LocalStorage cleanup are enabled in Cookie Autodelete)

Apple: Since you care about yOuR pRiVaCy, we'll train our AI on made-up emails

ThatOne Silver badge
Happy

Excellent! Very interesting!

An AI trained on itself over several iterations, I really would like to see that! Endless possibilities: A new grammar, even a new, totally alien language might emerge.

Or at least stuff to ROTFL over for hours on end...

Microsoft blames 'latent code issue' after Windows 11 upgrades sneak past admin blockades

ThatOne Silver badge
Facepalm

Who's the boss?

> Intune policies turn out to be mere suggestions

Just a passing fancy actually. Apparently nothing to be concerned with.

Microsoft total recalls Recall totally to Copilot+ PCs

ThatOne Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: BTDTGTTS

> What if they then strt mandating Linux & FOSS applications in education? Too many Windows-only applications?

IIRC some big German city tried it already: They switched the whole administration to FOSS for a couple years, but eventually had to switch back to Microsoft because it didn't work out on the long term, too many things didn't work anymore (IIRC and AFAIK, I don't know the details). A pity.

ThatOne Silver badge

Re: Alleged Use Case

> most people struggle to remember what they're presently eating let alone what they did a week ago.

That's information triage: Unimportant information (AKA "background noise") gets filtered out and forgotten. If I had some famously good meal, I probably will remember. If I had some tasteless junk food I'd rather not remember it.

As for searching for details ("what exactly was the information I found last week"), I'm pretty sure Recall won't be able to give it to me. I think it would be way faster and safer to just reread that publication myself than to rely on what an AI understood about that topic.

Recall (or any other AI) is like having an assistant who doesn't know anything about your job. And an AI can't even make coffee... :-p

ThatOne Silver badge
Holmes

Re: Recall does not share snapshots or associated data with Microsoft or third parties

Yeah but they can't monetize them if they stay on your computer, now can they. And that must be the ultimate purpose, because I really can't see another.

What's the point of Recall? Why would they spend so much money and so much time on it, if they didn't think it will earn them millions? Huh?

ThatOne Silver badge
Facepalm

> only record the absolute minimum that you need to for the task in hand and delete it immediately it's no longer required.

Which is the opposite of what Microsoft does: Record the maximum and probably store it forever and a day (just in case they can eventually find a way to somehow monetize that information)...

I really wonder who on earth would find a use for continuous screenshots of their own computer screen. I mean, I know what I did five minutes ago, I was there, looking at that screen... Jeez.

ThatOne Silver badge
Trollface

Who said it doesn't?

ThatOne Silver badge
Big Brother

Re: Sorry, maybe I didn't make myself clear

Sorry, but the "Spies and Abusive Spouses" lobby is too strong: Come hell or high water, this has to be installed on everybody's computer.

Choose your own Patch Tuesday adventure: Start with six zero-day fixes, or six critical flaws

ThatOne Silver badge
Devil

Of course it's your fault: You should have bought something else.

James Webb Space Telescope to size up asteroid 2024 YR4 before it rocks our world

ThatOne Silver badge

Re: Let's give Earth another moon!

No chance to capture it, it's too fast. To make it enter orbit you'd have to slow that 40-90 m big ball of rocks and dirt down to more reasonable speeds, and this is way more expensive (in energy) than to just nudge it about 0.1° off its initial trajectory.

Nearly 10 years after Data and Goliath, Bruce Schneier says: Privacy’s still screwed

ThatOne Silver badge
Devil

> 'In 50 years, I think we'll view these business practices like we view sweatshops today'

As something we need to outsource to some faraway country so we can have plausible deniability?

When it comes to AI ROI, IT decision-makers not convinced

ThatOne Silver badge
Devil

Re: Helping them realize the value

Was about to say something similar... There aren't many ways to make people realize the value of "AI". Rubber hoses, electrodes applied to sensitive body parts, waterboarding, that about wraps it.

You know something's wrong when Clippy fills you with nostalgia for simpler times

ThatOne Silver badge

Re: "If it works, fix it"

> "Fix" wasn't the first verb that came to mind

I'd speculate that you don't work for Microsoft?

ThatOne Silver badge
Facepalm

> they replaced a good search the help tool in Office 95 with Clippy in Office 97

"If it works, fix it"... That has been the motto of Microsoft since last century. They just have gotten better at it in the recent years.

Copilot+ PCs? Customers just aren't buying it – yet

ThatOne Silver badge

> How do you intend to compensate me for that extra work?

You've got it all wrong. The question you should ask is, "Do I pay enough for the privilege having to spend time and effort and possibly some sort of software license to turn it into a functional and workable computer? I think not, so pretty pretty please also add some juicy hardware subscription, like for preventing my computer from turning into a pumpkin at midnight."

ThatOne Silver badge
Devil

> PCs are for staff running Word, Excel, and Outlook, [...] why would those staff need so called Artificial Intelligence in their machines?

Precisely for those reasons: Microsoft is about to make sure Word, Excel, and Outlook (or whatever they are called today) won't work without "AI".

ThatOne Silver badge
Devil

Re: confusion

> So why would you need it on your PC?

As I said further up, it's not all about you. You might not need it, it might even be detrimental to your productivity, bank account and privacy, but the IT industry needs it to make some more money. It's not their fault you aren't satisfied just being told you're "one of the cool kids" if you buy an AI-enabled laptop.

ThatOne Silver badge
Devil

Re: Weird!!!

> with features they don't need.

Seriously, it's not all about you!

Microsoft needs those features, and the PC manufacturers: They have "growth" to sustain...

Trump admin seeks to reclassify federal CIOs, opening door to political appointees

ThatOne Silver badge
Big Brother

Chief Information Commissar

The idea is old. To quote Wikipedia: "In the Red Army, a political commissar was a high-ranking functionary at a military headquarters who held coequal rank and authority with the military commander of the unit. The Bolshevik Party established political commissars in 1918 to control and improve morale in the military forces."

Firefox ditches Do Not Track because nobody was listening anyway

ThatOne Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Tracking

Which part of "purely voluntary, optional and not to be taken serious" did you miss?... Why would anyone prevent absentminded/terminally impatient users just accepting the complete tracking package, just because at some point they bothered setting a purely decorative feature?

Poor DNT was doomed from the start, being voluntary it is as efficient as a "Please do not break in" on your house.

Microsoft hijacks keyboard shortcut to bring Copilot to your attention

ThatOne Silver badge
Devil

...if Microsoft permits it. Don't ever forget, you can only disable their things as long as they tolerate it.

First-ever UEFI bootkit for Linux in the works, experts say

ThatOne Silver badge

Re: An open source unkillable Bootkit

> What is so hard about: [knowing lots of things]

Nonsense. You work in support, you're paid to know those tools. A doctor of medicine has spent enough time learning other tools and stuff you probably only have a very vague idea about. Said MD doesn't want to know "how twisted pair networking cable reduces electromagnetic interference", much like you probably don't know much about thyroid hormone activation (despite it being more important for your health than networking cables).

ThatOne Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: An open source unkillable Bootkit

Sorry, how is that better (for the average computer user) than just "install your OS of choice - get work done with it"?

What I'm saying is, a computer is supposed to help me do my work. The more hoops I have to jump through, the less able I am to do my actual work, the one I'm paid for. The more I have to fool around with gatekeepers, and the guards of gatekeepers, and the watchdogs of said guards, the less useful a computer becomes for real work. It's just increased entropy.

Of course if you are paid to mess about with all that stuff your perspective might be different, but it still isn't anything productive. Definitely not for the 99% of the population for whom using a computer is not an aim in itself.

Windows 11 24H2 rolls out to more devices – with a growing list of known issues

ThatOne Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: windows mail

> I don't understand why the modern UI is considered better than the old fashioned one.

Because newer = better. Has always been. It doesn't matter if it's actually working or not, the simple fact it is newer means it has to be better. Whole industries are living on that (clothing for instance).

FTC scolds two data brokers for allegedly selling your location to the meter

ThatOne Silver badge
Devil

Re: Which apps are selling them this data?

> but hasn't ticked off the people who are supplying it to them

Because those are better at lobbying. The lesson here is "spend more on your friendly neighborhood politician". Obviously a lesson our shady, fly-by-night data brokers hadn't learned yet.

Chinese boffins find way to use diamonds as super-dense and durable storage medium

ThatOne Silver badge
Devil

> think about just how far we've come in such a short period of time

That's because Windows is ever-expanding. This staggering storage medium increase is the result of the race to leave the user a little bit of free space to store some files of his/her own...

Microsoft hits back at claims it slurps your Word, Excel files to train AI models

ThatOne Silver badge

> expensive process

So what, it's not them who pay.

ThatOne Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: And the justification?

> what possible justification is there for building-in such capabilities?

Collecting precious "telemetry"? I mean, what was the rationale for everything else they did lately? Think of Recall©™, that's another feature which isn't really of any use, it might even be dangerous for the sucker client. But Microsoft decided they can make money from that, and that's the only justification it requires.

They are utterly shameless, and given this has no negative effects on their bottom line, they will keep increasing the spying while progressively dropping any pretense of decency.

ThatOne Silver badge

Re: I can see this outside the EU on the home versions of Windows.

> Depends if they think they can get away with it.

Exactly. They will try it, if only because it's the cheapest choice. And if the EU (eventually) starts complaining, they will claim they are misunderstood and everything was for the users' benefit (and "somebody think of the children", too), and thus try to stall for as long as possible. After all managers never plan beyond 2-3 financial quarters.

Abandoned US Army 'city under the ice' imaged in serendipitous NASA find

ThatOne Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Context in reporting....

> The important detail would be how much damage could be expected if that much low-level nuclear waste was released

Reality check: 99.9% of the time the important detail would be "will it affect me somehow (directly or through lawsuits)"? If not, it's somebody else's problem, i.e. unimportant.

I don't say that's right, I just say that's how it usually works. Money talks, and when money talks, everything else shuts up.

Microsoft reboots Windows Recall, but users wish they could forget

ThatOne Silver badge
Devil

Re: I’m sure I won’t have to endure it…

> a Copilot+ AI PC is a requirement for this [...] a Microsoft account, rather than a local one, will also be needed.

Not a problem: Soon all PCs will be AI PCs, simply because of their bigger better margin, and as far as I have heard the latest version of Win11 don't allow local accounts anymore: It's either a Microsoft account or nothing at all.

Meaning, nothing will stand between you and your new Recall™ bliss...

ThatOne Silver badge
Devil

> seems like a very odd one to me

It's the spies who complain, not those spied upon. "Hey, how do I know my spouse wasn't meeting with someone in those undocumented minutes???"

ThatOne Silver badge

Re: Hmmmm.....

> I'm afraid Microshaft is going to have a bad day come October 25 2025...

Nah, they managed to get rid of WinXP after all, and that one was really well entrenched. WIn11 with AI sauce will just follow the same OP, simply being the only choice once you need to buy a new computer. It will take some time, but unfortunately it's inevitable.

(As for leaving Microsoft, those who were mentally capable of doing so have already done it since Win8 (I'm one of those). Most people still remaining with Windows are unable to leave, for one reason or another, like corporate management or lack of computer know-how.)

ThatOne Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Killer App

Yes, but shiny...!

People will eventually find some use for it, I bet soon we'll have the first testimonies of people who claim they couldn't live without it.

O2's AI granny knits tall tales to waste scam callers' time

ThatOne Silver badge

Re: Now there’s a challenge!

> Because the way LLMs are trained is using real data

Sure, but firstly not your data, and secondly in this specific case I don't see why they would need to train the fake granny bot with any real bank account data. Its task is to prattle on, not to handle financial transactions.

ThatOne Silver badge

Re: Now there’s a challenge!

That's assuming the bot knows that information. Why would it?

All bark, no bite? Musk's DOGE unlikely to have any real power

ThatOne Silver badge

I do see one? (Spoiler: In the fine print)

Mozilla's Firefox browser turns 20. Does it still matter?

ThatOne Silver badge

No dilemma for me, I simply ceased to use Opera (which had been my second browser for many years). As for Edge, it's just a glorified MS Internet Explorer, and I'm highly allergic to that since Netscape times...

ThatOne Silver badge

Re: I never cared for Chrome

NCSA Mosaic -> Netscape -> Firefox: The natural progression I'm sure a vast majority here has gone through.

Of course I've tried other browsers (like Opera) out of curiosity, but I never saw a reason to change. Maybe because unlike many, I was never convinced by the propaganda that Netscape/Firefox are fundamentally bad and evil and that using them deposits soot in my CPU and destroys my Karma (or whatever other nonsense), and that only the shining Chrome guarantees the pure browsing bliss I deserve.

ThatOne Silver badge

Re: Rewriting history?

> It was malware

Of course you're right, I was desperately trying to remain polite.

ThatOne Silver badge
Devil

Re: Firefox is very useful to Google

Soon to become antitrust lapdogs...

ThatOne Silver badge
Unhappy

> the worry's about Chrome taking over the internet

I'm afraid it's too late: A decade ago most people believed "Google=Internet", later they settled for "Google+Twitter+Facebook=Internet" (not sure if that was much better).

My point is, controlling content (through search) and the means to deliver ads, Google currently owns the Internet. There are some minor contenders, just there to avoid too obvious a monopoly.

ThatOne Silver badge
Flame

Rewriting history?

> [Chrome 1 was] "superior in so many ways and, initially anyway, appealing so deeply to web developers"

BS! At first Chrome was inferior, but it used stealth tactics to take over peoples' computers* and replace their default browser, so it eventually became the majority browser. And of course developers flock behind majorities.

* for those too young to have seen it: At that time you had to regularly download security patches for major software like Acrobat and Flash. Every time you installed such a patch, unless you clicked on a barely visible link while whistling "The Star-Spangled Banner" in reverse, it also silently installed Chrome, copied your bookmarks to it, and made it your new default browser. Again and again, with every patch. Given Chrome wasn't really branded, most people didn't notice, and those who did assumed the change was normal. This way Chrome rose from 0% to 60% market share in a year. Nothing to do with quality.

Arecibo telescope might have failed because of weak sockets

ThatOne Silver badge

> trying to desperately pretend it was anything but that

It sounds indeed like that. Because (AFAIK) most of the time Arecibo was used as just another passive radio telescope, so most of the time there was no "unique powerful electromagnetic radiation environment", not any more than at the George Washington bridge. Besides we would had noticed by now if strong radar radiation destroys metals...

Why did it fail despite a safety factor above two? Much likely because of potential initial building defects, and the lack of maintenance: The tropical environment is very aggressive.

Nolanverse Batmobile leaps barrier between film and reality – but it'll cost you

ThatOne Silver badge

Re: unspecified "advanced software upgrades"

Rather Alfred?

Killer app for AI is still years away, says industry analyst

ThatOne Silver badge
Devil

Re: Killer app for AI is still years away

> Killer app for AI is still years away

But profit is at the door - Now!

Before people discover what this exciting new technology can do (besides easy fakes).

Thanks, Linus. Torvalds patch improves Linux performance by 2.6%

ThatOne Silver badge
Devil

Re: UABP

You mean: "Buy our latest (exciting) processor implementing NewFad©™!!!"?

Because AFAIK the go-to solution of both chipmakers was to do nothing. Computer suddenly too slow? It's time to buy a new one. (You should even buy two, just in case.)

ThatOne Silver badge
Devil

Re: Fractional Gains

> There is a general lesson here, methinks.

That improving general efficiency is better than randomly shoehorning useless marketing gimmicks?

I really wonder why nobody thought of it before.

San Francisco billboards call out tech firms for not paying for open source

ThatOne Silver badge
Facepalm

> Exactly. This is ridiculous. Open-sources licenses are free for everyone.

This is really basic greed and rabid opportunism.

Isn't it in the best interest of companies using open source projects to make sure those are well staffed, and their developers can focus entirely on improving whatever they are doing? What will happen to a company building its business on some FOSS project if that project is abandoned due to the maintainer(s) having a hard time to make ends meet? Won't they be forced to shell out lots of money to save what can be saved, assuming they aren't forced to quit too?

Yes, yes, cows give milk away for free, who said you're obliged to feed them? Milk is "free for everyone"...